Started: September 24th, 2004 Rewrite: December 13th, 2004 Last edit: 05/11/2006 - Went through and took out the LG tags, as AK recently broke them.

For those of you that have not seen this post before, I bid you welcome. For those battle-scarred veterans of Promyvion who helped contribute data, I bid you thanks.

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How do I get to Promyvion?

Short form of the Emptiness access quests:

0) You must have Chains of Promathia purchased and installed. Remember to register the Content ID.

1) Visit Lower Delkfutt's Tower. Cutscene as you zone in. 2) Visit Upper Jeuno. Cutscene as you zone in. 3) Go to the Upper Jeuno infirmary (on the map), talk to Monberauxe. It's his infirmary. Cutscene. 4) Go to Ru'Lude Gardens and head into the palace. Proceed left around the main stairweel go through the door. You'll have entered the guard room. Talk to Pherimociel for the last cutscene you need.

5) Go visit a shattered crystal. Each of the three main telepoints has one. If this is your first visit, or if your memory is erased, you'll be prompted twice before entry.

6) You'll spawn the Hall of Transference. If this is your first time in, talk to the Large Apparatus. If you have been in this Promyvion before, you can walk up to the Cermet Door and talk to it for entry.

What should I know about this zone?

General details about the Emptiness:

* You're going through this stuff because it's the only way to access the Tavnazian Archipelago. If you ever want to get to that part of the world, this is the way. It's CoP's version of the Khazam Key quest.

* The level cap is 30.

* Experience will be earned here. If you are at or below level 30, you will earn experience as you normally would. If you are in Limit Mode, you will earn experience as you normally would. If you are in Experience Mode and are above level 30, your experience is reduced. All XP earned is applied to your main class. All deaths received carry a Lv30 penalty (350-400 after returning to your Home Point).

* Experience earned in a level-capped zone is either... Formula 1) You earn the xp you'd get if your class were at it's full level. Formula 2) You earn 1/2 the xp of your capped job.

... whichever is greater. If you're on a lv31 main capped down to 30, you'll get lots of xp and can do xp chains. If you're on a 60 main capped down to 30, you'll get 1/2 the xp a lv30 would earn. You can still get xp chains, however.

* Promy zones are keyed upon entry; if you've gone into Dem you can skip the entry cutscenes by talking to the Cermet Door in Dem. Conversely you can't warp directly to Mea and enter the crystal there. You'll receive no message explaining your inability to enter. If you want to leave the Promy you're working on and go elsewhere, use the Large Apparatus on your way out. The Apparatus will erase your memory, allowing you to enter any Promy zone. Once you have beaten a Promy zone and received the key item, you can enter and leave it at-will without erasing your memory.

* Erasing your memory does not remove drops acquired, experience earned, or key items obtained. It is only there to untie you from a given Promy zone.

* Enemies in Promyvion are called `the Empty`. There are several classes, detailed below.

* Each Promyvion has four floors of enemies. 1st: Easy Prey to Decent Challenge 2nd: Even Match to Tough 3rd: Very Tough to Incredibly Tough 4th: IT++

* To go up a floor, you must find and defeat a Memory Recepticle. MRs show up on Wide Scan. MRs always appear on platforms and the platform locations are fixed (thus memorizable/mappable). When you beat an MR, if you're fortunate, a portal to the next level will appear. Some MRs will not generate portals. More MR details are found below.

* MR Portals last for three minutes. Do not panic and rush the Portal, lest you leave someone behind. Make sure you take the time needed to clear any residual strays before ascending to the next level.

* If you need to go down a level, search for a platform that has a live portal, but no MR sitting on it. That will be the portal down. Try not to get separated from your group!

* The fourth floor has no MR; instead, you must find and enter the Spire. The Spire is a tower-like structure and has an archway that you zone through. Reaching it can be highly entertaining.

* The Spire is an empty room with a door at the end. The level-cap is removed inside the Spire. The door acts like a Burning Circle; talking to it lets your party enter for a BCNM battle against the Spire's boss. The level-cap is re-applied when the battle begins and all non-food buffs will be removed.

* Enemies drop several types of items, but the most important are the Recollections. These rare/ex items can be synthed into special animas by Harith (found in Ru'Lude in the building past Maat). Farm recollections and make the special animas before the boss fight. Farming these should be mandatory! See the appropriate section below for more information.

* Boss fights are single-party only. If you went up with a partial alliance someone is going to sit out during the fight. This can be good or bad...

* If you die against the boss, you are ejected back to the Spire after three minutes is up. If someone's there, they can Raise you. If you win, and it's your first victory, you are teleported back outside the shattered telepoint. If you have won before, you will go to a chamber with a teleporter; the teleporter can send you either outside or back to the Spire, your choice. If someone is left behind in the Spire and you have already left the Promy zone, the only way to get to them is to go UP.

* The Memory Flux gates are not used during the first three Promyvion runs. Don't worry about them.

What enemies will I encounter?

Each Promyvion zone has three regular enemies, plus an additional crag-specific beast. All Promy enemies can be thought of as Sight aggro, and all of them have True Sight. It is possible to stalk through without a single needless engagement.

The crag-specific enemies are important, as the boss in each crag is based off that class, as is the boss waiting in the Spire. If you want to learn how to fight the boss, spend some time fighting the crag-specific enemy - the boss typically gets one extra special attack. Not that it matters; you should be slamming it with Hysteroanima instead of eating it's special attacks.

Normal Enemies:

Wanderer: Floating wisps of memory; these are the most common creature and are sometimes found in packs.

The Thinker likely has more skills but we weren't letting them live long enough to find out for sure.

Notorious Monsters:

On 12/9/2004 NMs were added to the Promyvion zones. The NMs always appear on the third floor of the zone. In each Promyvion, the third floor is actually comprised of two separate maps; one has the NM, one does not. Which map you get is somewhat random. (Check FFXI-Atlas for confirmation.)

The NMs can range and have no predefined area or movement pattern that I can find; we wound up chasing the Coveter for quite some distance after he killed my party.

The NMs drop a rare/ex Remnant keyed to their type, and may also drop Memodrops for that crag. See the relevant sections below.

The NMs are hard, but can be beaten by a party of six; alliances should worry only about the AOE skills. Animas cannot be used against the NMs. My Promy strike-team was able to take the Coveter and the Cerebrator in the same evening. The fights are hard; there isn't much difference between the NM and the boss, save for a single skill and the boss having a few more HP. NMs are significantly harder than their crag-specific counterparts.

* Utsusemi doesn't do a thing versus these attacks, as the enemy steals your shadows for itself.

Enemy core-types:

Pay attention to the core of the Empties; by noting the color, you can tell what it's elemental properties are -- and from that, you'll know what weakness it has. The excellent photos below are from Prim:

To reach the Spire you must locate and fight Memory Recepticles. MRs are large glowing balls that sit on the various platforms found in Promyvion. An MR will have a number of Strays surrounding it. Strays look like Wanderers and appear as a clustered group.

When you arrive at an MR it will not attack, though its Strays will aggro. The MR remains inactive until engaged. Clear the Strays first, then set a camp to do battle from.

MRs fight using two techniques. First, they'll spawn Strays throughout the fight. You can see this happen when the MR goes up into the air. Second, the MR has an attack called Empty Seed. This is a high range AOE damage skill with an incredible knockback effect. It's lots of fun to get slapped by.

Best practices:

If you are a damage dealer, get on the platform with the MR. Set your back to one of the four pillars on the platform. This will keep you in melee range and prevent the knockback effect from sending you flying. It will also keep you conveniently close to one another for Curaga spells. Empty Seed can also be blocked with Utsusemi.

My recommendation is to have one attacker stand back with the healer. Let this attacker pull Strays as they're born and engage them solo. A Red Mage is completely capable of soloing every Stray created during the battle.

Keep up the damage and the MR will fall. As soon as it dies, the main combat team must engage and defeat any remaining Strays. Once the platform area is clear, pray that a portal spawns to take you upstairs.

If you are in an overstrength alliance, it pays to know that you don't have to call for help on a Recepticle fight. All available players may engage and kill the MR together.

- `Fake` Recepticles -

Sometimes you'll kill an MR and it won't give you a portal. You will have to kill a new MR to go upstairs. Sometimes they spawn on other platforms; sometimes one will respawn on the same platform you just fought. The rate of portal spawns is unknown, but is keyed only to beating the MR - not to a particular platform.

What kinds of drops can I expect, and what do they do?

There are four types of drops that occur in Promyvion. Note that Rangers cannot Scavenge here.

Remnant of a memory

There are eight types, one for each element in the game. Alchemists are able to synth these into Elemental Animas, which are used in a variety of other tasks. The recipes for Elemental Animas are Alchemy Lv75~ and require the guild key item. Here's the breakdown for which types synth to which elements:

Memodrops are what give you the map to a given Promyvion. To get the map you must locate the ??? point inside the Promyvion zone. This point will be inside a blue structure; one of Promy's streetlights, if you will. It will be surrounded by enemies.

Memodrops may fall very rarely from the crag-specific enemies; Gorgers in Dem, Cravers in Mea, Thinkers in Holla. They also drop from the Notorious Monsters.

There is a different color memodrop for each Promyvion. The colors and associated crags are listed:

Dem - Beryl Memodrop Mea - Indigo Memodrop Holla - Teal Memodrop

The ???-point will always be on one of the heavily guarded lamp-like objects out in the zone. This has been made more confusing thanks to the addition of NPC quests, which you finish by finding a separate, different ???-point. Remember the lamps!

The ???-point for the map is most always on the third or fourth floor.

Recollection of <x>

These are the most important of the four drops! These are what you'll want to go into Promy for to farm up before taking a shot at the bosses. Recollections are rare/ex memories that can be exchanged for special animas. The special animas act like anti-boss weapons.

The special animas can be used like any item or food would be; the target will be the Boss instead of yourself. Example macro: /item "Psychoanima" <t>

There are three types of recollections, and three types of animas to be made:

Recollection of Guilt -=> TerroanimaThe enemy will become afraid and run around. Good as a defense if you're drawn unfortunate aggro. You can also try to ElemSeal+Bind and pound on the enemy; he will not fight back while he's trying to flee.

Recollection of Fear -=> PsychoanimaThe enemy will be Intimidated for the duration. This will pre-empt any normal attacks. Special attacks may still occur while Pyschoanima is in effect. If you are able to use Psychoanima before the NM triggers a physical attack skill (such as Carousel), the damage will be negated.

Recollection of Pain -=> HysteroanimaThe enemy will attempt to use special attacks, but they will not execute. This is a fantastic anima as it prevents the boss from swarming you under with their most powerful attacks. Sadly there is no message to let you know that Hysteroanima is working, nor any to let you know when it stops.

These effects of these special animas <> stack <>. If you farm up Psychoanima to go with your Hystero you can shut down Physical and Special attacks for 25-30 seconds at a stretch. As long as you can do sufficient damage to the boss and kill it before you're out of animas you're going to be fine.

Some Recollections are easier to farm in certain crags due to the way they drop. Wanderers will drop one Recollection, Weepers drop another, Seethers drop the third. Seethers can only be found on the second floor and higher and are a pain to fight - it may be to your advantage to change to an easier crag to farm a particular Recollection.

I recommend Hysteroanima for your entire party at a minimum; Hystero + Psycho for best results. Terroanima has caused me more problems than benefits - I do not use it in combat.

Take these back to Harith in Ru'lude Gardens (the building back behind where Maat is). Trade him the Recollection + 2,000g to get your special anima back. There is a minor catch to this.

The animas are rare/ex, so you can't hold two.

If you synth up your Hysteroanima then give him a Rec. of Pain, Harith will take it. He'll even make the Hysteroanima for you. He just won't give it to you! He'll also refuse to do any other conversions while he's holding your Hysteroanima.

Remnant of a <Notorious Monster>

Each of the NMs drops a rare/ex Remnant; the Coveter drops a `Remnant of a coveter`, for example.

These Remnants can be taken into Promyvion-Vazhl and traded to ???-points inside. When traded, new Promy-Vazhl NMs are spawned. These special NMs drop some interesting gear, but as this guide is only about the three basic promys, it will not be detailed. :)

Each Promy NM drops a single copy of its Remnant.

What's waiting for me in the Spire?

Boss fights, of course. The Spire is a long room where your level cap is turned off. At the end is a door that you can talk to; doing so will start a BCNM-style fight called `Ancient Flames Beckon`. Your party is teleported into the arena and the battle begins. You will have time to buff and med on the inside of the door, so don't panic - just don't run forward after you zone in.

The offspring are smaller than normal Gorgers and are weak. The Progenerator is immune to Sleep and Bind; the offspring are not. The maximum number of offspring in play is 6. Offspring will continue to be generated if some are killed off. Fusion seems to start happening @ 50% HP and can be blocked by Hysteroanima or by kiting the Progenerator around.

This NM is said to have a regeneration ability, though I did not see it in combat. The only major problem it caused for my party was that the offspring were generated faster than we could handle (our first run was with 0 anima in hand).

Kiting is possible and is fun; it's especially do-able with a blink tank and ElemSeal+Gravity. If you get an offspring and have no way to handle it, consider kiting the boss or using a Terroanima; that should give you plenty of time to handle the add.

Carosel is a bothersome attack as healing your damage dealers often requires Curaga, which can shift hate in unpleasant ways. Utsusemi can block the Carosel. Utsusemi can't block the AOE poison effect from Promyvion Brume. This is an incredibly nasty skill to face; Hysteroanima will be your friend.

Make sure you bring Antidote potions to self-cure poison; your healer will not have time to give Poisona to people. The hate-reset also makes doing so a dangerous proposition.

This boss is incredibly hard to fight if let him spam his skills. Try triggering hysteroanimas every 20 seconds (or six weapon attacks) to keep him from ever getting one off. Bring poison potions - Brume resets hate; if your WHM is doing Poisona repeatedly he may find himself being chased. Running away with Gravity on is ... tricky.

Bring poison potions (something slow) to make sure you don't sleep; bring Holy Water to fix the Curse status.

Hysteroanimas are your friend. Every 20 seconds will do it for you. My team fought this boss with six hysteroanimas on board; we used four by the time he died. We were not affected by a single skill, so I can't fully update his list. In truth, I never want to go up there to let him slap me around. Would you? ^^

- Helping Others -

People who have completed a BCNM fight are able to enter to help others, so long as someone who needs the battle triggers combat first. In all respects, it's just like the 2-3 Dragon fight, the the 5-1 Archlich Taber'quon fight, the 5-2 Shadow Lord fight, and many others.

You will then be able to walk to the Tavnazian Safehold, where the next CoP missions await.

If you complete your last Promy run with a Level 30 character, it's important to know that there are aggressive enemies between you and the Safehold. Either wait for friends, recruit some on-site help, or back up 'til you find the Portal and jump over to Valkurm. Come back with Prism Powders (Orcs, Giants) and Silent Oils (Bugards).

It appears to be nothing more than a rumor that the MR's hitpoints are determined by the number of people attacking it. I've attacked them with 5 people and with 12 people, and it went down quicker the second time. Plus it doesn't really make too much sense -- the deadliness of the thing is in the Strays, anyway.

I also found this description of each BC mob. I didn't write down the name of the person who originally wrote it, so sorry for not being able to give you credit:

Holla BC mob: Wreaker(Seether type) AE Sleep and Curses, HP Drains. Absorbs all buffs (food, shell, protect, etc) that makes it stronger. tip: Tanks and attackers: don't use any buffs! Take poison poion to counter sleep, holy water for uncurse and hi-potions. You recieve a key item after defeating it and get ported out to La Theine.

Mea BC mob: Delver(Craver type) Strong Poison and has an attack that reset hate and does insane damage, can be avoided by utusemi or running away. tip: Go all out on it with 2H etc after it's HP reaches 50%. Antidote, Hi-Potion and 'Persikos au lait'(regen). You recieve a key item after defeating it and get ported out to Tahrongi.

Dem BC mob: Progenerator(Gorger type) (Weak to water?) Starts spitting out Offspring(Gorger type) after 50%hp, 1 at a time upto 6 that will repop if killed. (drops with the boss). tip: It regenerates so go all out when you see it's regen outpace your damage. Don't bother with the 6 pops. hi-potions. You recieve a key item after defeating it and get ported out to Konschtat.

We tried calling for help on the Memory Receptacle, and were not allowed. I assume this is a special rule type mob in this sense, thus whether you handle it one on one or 18 on one, I think it's hp might be the same.

Suggested strategy for killing Memory Receptacle:

Have RNG's, BLM's, BST's use their weapons/magic/pets to wear it down. Poison and Bio are very helpful from a BLM, (as I'm sure Burn or Choke or whatever as well).

All melees concentrate on keeping strays out of your way. White mages make sure the range people do not get killed, well, anyone for that matter ^^

Explored 2nd level a bit, but still no luck finding the ??? to get map. Watched another alliance take on the 2nd receptacle, they were doing well but there were alot more strays here and mages got some agro (never good). I was able to pick off a few strays for them and was surprised I never got hit by Empty Seed, so assuming it only hits those in pt/alliance that has claim on receptacle. The alliance made it thru w/ about half their people, the rest were dead or dying from strays and couldn't port in time.

Decided to try my technique on 2nd receptacle once area was reset. It was working well, however, when I pulled a stray to regain hit points, the receptacle regenerate health very quickly. So worked it back down below 1/2 life and ran out of shehei, so w/ out utsusemi I just backed off and headed for exit.

I'm going to stock up and try this again tonight after work. Will post more info later.

Just something i figured out today, even if you have the Memory Recepticle claimed, other alliances and parties can also attack it. We noticed it because our RNG decided to try and shoot an arrow or 2 at one while another alliance was fighting it. So calling for help on them wont actually do anything, because they can allready be attacked by anyone

Another very important thing is orginization and following instructions. We failed today because half of the alliance we were in did not follow instructions to clear out all aggro before going in the portal, so 12 of the 18 members ported, and left 6 of us to fight 3 strays, so we missed the portal. Basically, dont take this too lightly, it is NOT easy, and just because its lvl 30 cap doesnt mean that it can be done by anybody. A lot of adds will happen if your not careful and sneaking around things. Don't go around looking for fights past the second level. Monsters like to clump together and even though they dont link, they will aggro you.

Regardless, these are a lot of fun, and i intend to finish all of them next week with my linkshell, good luck to anyone who tries this.

Not sure if anybody is far enough to answer this yet, but once you complete it, can you go in and do it again. Or will it be like the rank 2-3 dragon fight and the dragoon dragon fight where you can only re-enter with somebody that hasn't finished it yet.

Either way, just did the quest to get in here, me and a friend took out some EP on the first floor then we had to leave, I plan on going back to solo some of the EP at the first floor, then later going with an alliance of my LS.

yeah i went with a thf pld and me(rng). we killed the 1st receptical, noticed the mobs got harder and said ***** this lol, we'll come back with a full pt. as for those who have beaten it or know those who have, what is its purpose?!?! other than storyline of course, which is always nice. i read in one thread it would allow you to get to tavnazian safehold if you beat them all? any other info or bonuses you get? (thread was the 1st one you linked).

You can not call for help on a Memory Recepticle. I tried this, it just won't let you.

I spent hours getting to the Mea BCNM only to die at the boss. Many people dropped along the way and we did not have enough tanks be successful.

Expect it to be long. Expect there to be a lot of problems with strays and teleports, people getting stuck and then having to redo the lvl again. All I can say is, don't be in a rush for the teleport. Make sure everyone gets through, you have a minute to either kill all the aggro (Don't create more) or sleep them all (I hope you have a brd). Don't rush ahead from the group, stick to a leader. Oh, and don't use reraise before getting into the BCNM battle. > < Have fun.

A thing to note is that Promyvion itself is considered a regular zone like any other, except that it has limits to battling there. You can only have access to one Promyvion at a time, and it has a level cap of 30.

There is an area called "Hall of Transference" that you teleport to before you enter the actual Promyvion area. This area is meant to give you a space to prepare for entry into Promyvion (switch armor, basically). Don't do your buffs, etc. cause they will wear off just like a burning Circle.

I have yet to be to a Spire of anything yet, but we're hoping to get there tonight. In case anyone hasn't figure out yet, this looks to be a GREAT place to level from 25-30-ish... an alternative to Yuhtunga :D

We had a full alliance. A smn, whm, and a rng (I was a rng) in every group the rest were various mages and melee. We started this with almost no prior knowledge on tactics and whatnot.

The first Memory Receptacle was easy. The tactic we used was for the rngs and smns to attack with ranged and avatars while the melees protected us from the strays and the mages healed.

The second lvl mobs ranged from T to IT. Some of the mobs you'll see from here on in have some very nasty AOE spells including a diaga that takes about 9-10 hp/tick. The 2nd receptacle was much tougher than the first (common sense I know, but I can't stress it enough). We used the same tactic for the 2nd one and we beat it although there was more than a few deaths. There weren't enough melees to keep the strays off of the rngs and smns. Even though we defeated it, there was no portal.

So we regrouped and found another receptacle. Our tactic this time was to get one of the smns to do an aoe attack to draw all the hate from the strays while the rest of us killed the receptacle. It worked fairly well, only one death this time, and we were on to the 3rd lvl.

The 3rd receptacle was exponentially tougher. It would spam Empty Seed with pretty much no delay. That and the horde of strays took care of us fairly quickly. We managed to defeat the MR, but only about half of the alliance was alive and made it through the portal. After much standing around and more deaths from the people that made it through, we decided to come back when we could find some more info on it.

Sidenotes:

Rare/ex drops: Recollection of Guilt and Recollection of Pain.

We also found a door-like structure on the 3rd lvl called Memory Flux. You could target it, but all it would say is something about the memories holding it together.

I apologize for the lack of detail, but things were a little hectic and disorganized.

We passed the floors easy as pie. The hardest part was communication. We used WAR/NIN's for tanks, RNG's/BLm's for ranged attackers, and tried to keep 1 SMN per pt.

The Orbs have "fakes" that, when killed, do not open a gate.

The idea of SMN is that Astral Flow will spank the NM on the 4th floor, but we were still unsucessful ><

The end NM, Delver, was tough as nails. Heavy resists to magic, Bind didt work, and its AOE is perfectly capable of 1-shotting a hume BLM.

Next time, Im bringing a Reraise with me. This is important for RNG's, BLM's. We can attack effectively while weak (Manafont).

BLM's: Dont waste your MP on the little guys around each Orb guard. They can be Aspir'd well, and Drain'd. Melees will finish these quick, no need to blow MP.

Anything with a white core to it will eat it from Drain. 110+ dmg, a sizeable chunk of thier life.

Anything with a Blackish purple core is super-resistant to Dark based magics. The color of the orb generally tells you its element, and what to nuke with.

The Orb floor guards seemed to resist -ga magic more, and Tier II did fairly well on it (All you get is Stone II and Water II ><)

The Orbs seem to change element as well, with no apperance change. (Thats just a hunch, spell damage was erratic. Sometimes 90% resist, sometimes extra dmg)

The final to Mea spanked all 3 pt's in our alliance. >< As aforementioned, hate is difficult to manage in this fight. For any BLM's, debuff him if you can, playing it light. WHen the first AOE hits, land your drain and wait for a voke. Then let him have it.

The Memory Recepticle WILL attack anyone near it with Empty Seed, even if they are not in the claiming party. A mate and I were exploring the first level and walked up to it just before a party took it on, and he got nailed with it right off while the others in the attacking party did not.

Got an alliance together in about an hour, each party had a BLM, a WHM, a PLD, and DDs. My party was BLM WHM PLD THF DRK WAR (me). It was a lot of fun, and it's actually incredibly easy with an alliance.

The first floor is a joke. All the mobs are EP and go down in seconds. When you get the Memory Recepticle, let the BLMs and RNGs go to town on it. The first one goes down pretty fast and the Seekers are very easy to kill. You will get interrupted if you have aggro when you step on the platform.

The second floor is harder. The mobs are DC->T, but with an alliance, it's very easy. Same deal on the Recepticle, but make double sure to kill the Seekers. They get very annoying.

The third floor is when it finally gets hard. Everything is IT (but slightly IT. Low eva and low def on a few), so if you get aggro, you'll be ok as long as you don't pull a whole lot of links. This last Recepticle is HARD. The Seekers are a small challenge and they come in groups of two or three. It's probably a good idea to get it on low HP, then heal and come back. Not having this foresight, two people in the party died.

The fourth floor is ****. It's like a 500 foot run to the castle. All the mobs are IT++. Taking one is dangerous. Getting a link is ******' SCARY. We barely survived this, and eventually just gave up trying to be sneaky and just sprinted to the castle. Take not that everything in Emptiness has True Sight.

The Spire of Mea is definitely an awesome sight, and it prepares you for the BCNM fight. Make sure all your parties are evened out, and DO NOT BUFF. Anything you buff, the NM will buff as well. Just eat your food and bring regen/mana-regen drink. We had all three parties go in at once, but you'll probably rather go one group at a time so each group knows what to expect.

We almost won. Poison hit our WHM, she tried to cure herself and the Paladin, pulled too much aggro, got a bad double attack critical on her, and fell. However, this mob is DEFINITELY weak to Thunder. We pulled off a killer SC with Berserk+Frostbite -> Mighty Strikes+Berserk+Sneak Attack+Sturmwid = Fragmentation bursted with Thundaga. That did about 1200 damage total, and knocked a good chunk of the HP bar off.

You definitely need the key item to get past the boss. I feel really ripped off because I had a great time, spent three hours working, made some good XP even, and then got nothing out of it except a slap in the face.

Only go if you expect to win. It's not fun to make it to Spire and get *******

Does anyone know what the various memory fragments are used for? My entire alliance got aobut 10 of these and tried trading them to the scientist in Ru'Lude. He said he would purify them to anima but never accepted our trades.

Like everyone else has said, first floor is a joke, second floor is a little more difficult.

It's that third floor that makes things complicated. If it weren't for this floor, you could easily get to the spire with 12 people. But this stinking Memory Receptacle and all it's Strays are very difficult to defeat even with 18 people. If anyone could work out a great strategy for this, please let me know.

4th floor, do your best to avoid aggroing anything, these guys are painful.

THE BOSS FIGHT:

Come over-prepared for this fight. This isn't the Rank 3 dragon battle, you can't waltz in without potions, drinks, food, etc. and expect to win.

He hits NASTY hard, terrible knockback attacks, and the one I loved the most was the "Impaler" attack. Did 446 damage to me. On the flip side, since I took so much damage, I lost all my Emnity so his focus was no longer on me. That kept me alive more than once.

This really is nothing more than a battle of attrition. If you have the right amount of food, drinks, etc, you should be able to outlast him.

If you want to win, COME PREPARED!

Also of note, BLM don't really need to waste their MP with nukes on this guy, it does jack for damage. Very high resistance. RNG is the nuker of choice in this fight. However, that doesn't leave BLM with nothing to do: they can still be backup healers.

Also, do not use the RNG 2 hour Eagle Eye Shot until it is down to it's last leg of health (below 15%). You will get aggro, and you will most likely die, and so will the rest of your party.

How do you get your "memories erased", so you can enter a different Promyvion/Crag? I tried targeting and activating the other apparatus (opposite of the one that opens cermet door), but nothing happened.

Floor One: Cake. I don't have to repeat it again. Floor Two: No biggies here either. Floor Three: We lost two people while fighting five IT mobs. It sucked, but we raised and went on the way. Floor Four: Ran a bit, found the spire.

Some of these posts may indicate that getting to the spire is the hard part.

It isn't.

We had our alliance, and a JP alliance mowing everything down on the way, calling for help on the mobs and working together on the receptacles. Like I said, no major problems getting there...but the spire *can* and *will* kick your ***.

Our pt makeup on the most successful try against the NM was PLD/WAR, RDM/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/BLM, SMN/WHM and DRG/WAR. We knocked off maybe 1/4th of its health, and then it ate us alive. I cannot see a possible strategy here. If you buff, it uses your buffs against you. If you don't buff, you die too quickly. It has a nasty AoE attack (that does not hit everyone in the arena, thank god) and Utsusemi is a absolute godsend. I just can't see an effective way to damage it fast enough to make it fall.

I have used a Terroanima in Mea, and yes, it does help a lot, the Delver panics and runs back and forth briefly, then there's a fairly sizable debuff. Sadly, it didn't help enough, as the effect tapers off. More party members need to bring the anima, probably.

I want to figure out how to get past those flux gates, I've heard that they have something behind them that significantly weakens the end battle. Hopefully it won't be long before the mysteries are revealed.

---------------------------------------------------------------- * If you find a `Recollection` (i.e., Recollection of Guilt), rare/ex, you can take it out of the Emptiness and trade it to the black-robed scientist dude hanging out in the Palace (he's in the far back room, the private chambers, staring at a picture on the wall; if talked to before, says `Hmm... Emptiness... Weakness..?`). Trade it to him, pay 2k, wait 1 game day, and he gives back an item that supposedly helps with the boss fight in the Emptiness.

------------------------------------------------------------- I want to figure out how to get past those flux gates, I've heard that they have something behind them that significantly weakens the end battle. Hopefully it won't be long before the mysteries are revealed. -------------------------------------------------------------

Wow, almost looks like it fits ^^

Also, I've heard that once you've beated all 3 crags Promyvion versions, you gain a key item that allows you to jump in a whirlpool in Valkurm Dunes or Qufim Islands that will take you to Tavnazia. That's what I heard, at least, and in one of the 4 cutscenes, they did mention those whirlpools, I thought...

All I have to say is this is freaking awesome. I just finished an attempt on Dem. The first floor was cake. The second was a little tougher but we did ok. The third floor we got a link and got nailed with aoe silence...and well...lets just say there were 15 people laying on the floor face down. We didn't expect aoe silence but next time we'll be ready.

What's your guys strategies for taking down the Memory Recepticles? Our stratagy was just to have the blms and rngs nuke the **** out of them. Then the meeles would just pick up any Strays that aggroed the nukers. It worked pretty well on the first two that we went through.

I have used a Terroanima in Mea, and yes, it does help a lot, the Delver panics and runs back and forth briefly, then there's a fairly sizable debuff. Sadly, it didn't help enough, as the effect tapers off. More party members need to bring the anima, probably.

How did you use it, exactly? Did you click on it in your items? Did you trade it and target the Delver as your trade target? What?

The Boss in the Holla Spire casts plague. Is there any item that can cure plague, because when you are a group of Whm, Blm, Pld, Drg, Sam, and (honestly I forget what our 6th was). We were screwed when he hit us with a strong plague. It drains both TP, and MP so you are basically dying a very slow death with that on.

Also it does not take an alliance to get to the Spire. In fact when we did it with an alliance it was harder because things were very unorganized. With a party here is how we beat each of the Memory Receptors.

First we cast bio on the thing, of course it used its Empty Seed move. Then 1 of us would pull a stray build TP on it. First one with 100% TP, would go to the MR use it's best available WS, usually this caused a stray or 2 to link, we killed the strays, every time 1 person got 100% TP we would use that on the MR. I would use both my WS and Jump for a little added hit before his AoE knocked me back to the group.

We repeated this process of 1 person running in and using WS until it was dead. The mages healed, never nuked. It was a slow battle but the damage done was steady and consistant.

Also with a little stealth you can make it through the 4th floor to the spire with little to no battles at all. you just need to be patient and organized. It is pretty much a 1 way winding road to the spire.

Of course we died from the NM at the spire, due to his AoE plague move. But, we plan on getting some items(we went in with echo drops, holy water, hi-potions, because we were expecting him to use silence AoE and Curse, but he did neither of these). We got his health down to about half before he killed off the last member of our party.

Shake: So how did you like Mr.Sticks? Meatwad: Yea I met Jerry, he said you two had a run in. Shake:Bull Crap! I know that guy, he had an axe. Meatwad: Now that doesn't sound like the Jerry I know. The Jerry I know took me to Merry Christmas, as in Merry Triple "X" Mas, get it, it's a strip club. heh heh Shake:Give me that sandwhich! *Poof* Frylock:So your saying it was actually fun? Meatwad:**** No! That son of a ***** had an axe.

We went from a full alliance to 7 people running like **** to the castle (?) zone at the Dem zone. One died on the way and the 6 of us tried the fight ourselves...Whm, Whm, Blm, Sam, Drk, Rng. Well we almost got him but we all died at the end.

The run up there and the MR's went fairly smooth (on the first two levels we didnt even have to fight the MR's cause someone else did and we ran into the portal). We had i think 2 deaths before the spire, we raised and continued.

The Spire fight is a ***** tho. The AoE is brutal, especially the the plague, i think if it didnt cast plague we would have had a chance...we all died but we got its health down to prolly the final couple hundred, he was so close to dieing it was sad.

I was also able to solo the recepticle as rng/nin, exactly what a poster above me said. Just stay out of range of the strays and keep recasting utsusemi after the AoE. I think the best strategy to defeat each recepticle is to just let all the rng/nins in the PT kill it while everyone else stays out of range until it's dead. As for BCNM, I did not make it solo, I decided the 2nd floor was too crowded and I would not make it without getting tons of Aggro.

Well, made it past Receptacle on 2nd level solo. Took a bit longer, but not too bad. The Receptacle didn't seem much stronger than the one on first level. Had to kill one Stray between me and the port at end of the fight, then ran in quickly before the others agroed.

Been exploring 3rd level some, but still no luck finding the ??? to get the map. The Receptacle on 3rd level has 8 Strays surrounding it, so decided to put of trying solo and see if any PTs are around when I log on tomorrow. If not, I will try the same strategy and hope I can warp before Strays agro, but not liking my odds on this level.

Managed to join an 18-person alliance to try this tonight. Boy that is some intense stuff!

Made our way up to the 4th floor, had some extreeemly close calls when we were taking care of aggro when 2 Gorgers almost joined in the fray but they amazingly just turned away and ignored us ; ;

Went into the Spire, alliance split into 3, first group went and died fast. My group went in, and right after, my g/f's group went in with 5 people only because someone had disconnected on the 2nd floor and never came back. My g/f's party died very quick. :(

My party however, I'm proud to say actually won the battle despite not having any sort of item to weaken the boss. It was a horrendously close fight and the memory is burned into my mind forever lol. That Shade gear helps -- it paralyzes the boss when you need it the most. After looking like the battle was basically over with 4 people dead, it came down to me (SMN) and the NIN. The NIN somehow got hate from the boss and 3 offsprings and stayed alive long enough for me to do TWO 2-hour attacks. (Ramuh did considerable dmg against Dem boss, FYI) Ninjamonkeh is my hero!

We made a run at Dem last night. Made it thru the first couple levels easily. Started with 17 people leaving from Jeuno and picked up an 18th there. We did however lose a WHM heading thru the first stream. They didn't staick around long enough for us to find the way back to the first floor. From there we pretty much avoided mobs until we got to the MRs. On each floor we had to fight 1 more MR because we ran into "Fakes". I'm not sure but you might have to fight all of them before the Memory Stream opens. We didn't get any Rare/Ex items. When we got to the last MR we were down to 17 members. We lost 4 on the way thru because the Strays respawned so quickly. We had a SMN that volunteered to go into the BC first, he wanted to be the first to see it, leaving us with 2 full PTs. My PT went first and our SMN d/c'd right as we started to fight Progeneator. The Offspring he produced started shortly into the fight, nowhere near 50% HP. They all went after the WHM and he died shortly into the fight. By the time the SMN got back we were all dead. We wanted to try again, but I have a wedding to attend today IRL, so I had to go. /cry I'm gonna try again soon with my LS, our Leader is really good at putting things together it should go well.

Firstly, we had 24 people, not really by design, but we found another party following us around and decided to team up. If you can get 36 people who want to go, 2 alliances could trash the orbs by haveing one focus on the orbs and the others focus on the strays.

Bard's should NOT sleep strays except ones that have already aggroed the party. They are relatively resistant, and if you don't get close enough, there is a chance that they won't necessarily aggro you.

In the MR fights, we just had our BLMs and RNGs use Ranged/Spells and had our melees take care of the Strays. /Nin is very effective as your shadows will eat the AOE attack the Orbs do.

Make sure you clear a staging area when your doing the orbs, if you get a seether on top of all the strays and the orbs, it can become a very difficult fight.

Bringing some sort of Potion HI/X-potion for both the Trip and for the BCNM was helpful. There are times when your not getting hit for alot of damage and the Mages are busy, so it pays to be able to keep yourself alive. During one fight where 12/18 died, i was able to live due to potions, and more importantly, keep a whm alive ^^

Seethers have an attack called Occultation that steals Buffs. We had a whole bunch of /nin people and it stole like 25 shadows which was kinda funny.

I would suggest everyone who wants to complete one of these brings a Hyperanima which you get by getting one of the Reccolections and trading it to the Robed man in Ru'lude. This was very effective in our group.

For the Boss fight, some suggestions.

Do Not buff the Tank, you can buff the rest of the party though since Trinary Absorbion (the Absorb 3 buffs technique) only targets the person that the Boss is fighting, So just buff up as normal, then have the tank remove buffs.

The Boss has 3 special attacks Trinary Absorbsion: Steals 3 Buffs OR Debuffs. He stole Curse and Blindness from me once ^^ Empty Cutter: Serious damage DD, can be blocked by Shadows, This killed our Tank Twice ; ; Shadow Spread: AOE Curse/Sleep, Be sure to have Poison Potions/Uncurse potions.

Suggestions for people at the boss fight.

Mages: Have A scroll of reraise, 3 Yag Drinks, some Hi Ethers and Poison potions. (It can be hard to keep the Boss out of range) Rng/Melee: Be subbed Ninja because the boss attacks very slowly and it is possible to KITE it for an extended period of time. Bring Potions and Food.

Everyone should bring a scroll of reraise except the tank, since it can be stolen

You have to complete the 3 basic Promyvions to get to Lufaise Meadows.

How did you use it, exactly? Did you click on it in your items? Did you trade it and target the Delver as your trade target? What?

Use it like you would a medicine, except target the NM and not yourself. The Rare/EX animas can only be used on empties, I believe, but I was too afraid to risk losing the item trying it on a forest hare or something.

like most ppl have previously posted... have RNGs, BLMs, BSTs, SMNs or anything with ranged attack, pets or offensive magic take the MR... its best to stay away from aggro from the strays or your gonna find yourself with a very hard time. especially on the later levels... then once the MR is killed have everyone disengage and immediatly run onto the platform. by doing so you will aggro strays. make sure everyone is on the platform so that the strays will be in range for horde lullaby. if you dont have a bard have your BSTs or SMNs pets aggro the strays first. then immediatly zone. me and about 5 others (about 2 RNGs) made it to the boss floor with this strategy.

note: im not saying i had an easy time with P-Dem at all... ive been there for about the whole day yesterday with 2 different alliances and it was ****... i died about 7 times because it was poorly organized... fortunately the 5 others that i were left with at the end planned things that we suggested and we all got got to the fourth floor, as opposed to my first full 18 alliance that all died on the third floor MR....

Well, I did Promyvion-Dem a few hours ago, success! ^^ Getting up to the the castle was cake, noone pulled any huge trains and got us killed, so that was a relief. The BC was a tough one though. I went in and Elemental Seal+Gravity on the big guy. We got it down to 3/4 HP before it wore, second Gravity didn't stick. Wee played it well, two NIN tanks traded hate, and at around one half it popped an Offspring. Gravity stuck on the big guy this time, and we took out the offspring. RNG and BLMs two houred the sucker to death at 1/4 HP. Cleared in 9 min and 30 sec.

I just tried it with a group of around 20 people... I ended up with the Light of Dem, but with a hatred for this quest. We had a few team mates sacrificed to get to the 4 floor, because of the Strays and the interruption of getting on. I barely made it on, while one Stray was beating on me, I was very lucky. At the spire, 4 of our people had to suddenly leave, leaving 12 people (2 parties) for the final battle. The teams were very unorganized, each had 2 whms and one party ended up with no voker. The party I was in entered, one person had the anima from a previous attempt. We won fairly smoothly, with no deaths. The other party however... Well I wasn't quite sure what happened, but from what it sounded like, they were very close for winning but were all destroyed. As a WHM I didn't get much info on the final battle, and what his attacks did... Although he did a drain attack which drained about 160 HP.

I was with Musa in that other party. One peice of advice, NEVER try it without someone with voke. The fight wasnt really tough, just with no person able to keep aggro it was near impossible to use cure 2. Even with 2 whm's casting cure 1 it just wasnt enough. I was the last one to die and the boss has maybe 30% life or less when I did. Would have been simple with some hate control but without...

I am hoping as more time goes on and people figure out better ways to do this maybe it will be possible to get there with only 6 people. Having people leave and/or die on the way and not be able to have good party make ups makes it near impossible to win.

I will say Musa if you read this, the trip there aside from the few deaths was very well done. Probably the easiest time out of the 3 I have had getting to the Spire. All in all it was a good learning experience, and I feel sure I can win next time.

I don't know if this strategy has been said, I'm too lazy to look at all of the posts. =P I was at mea - just seeking a party hoping someone would pick me up. An alliance of 18 japanese went into mea, so I followed them, their strategy was very good it follows: They just avoided all enemys by staying near the edge, they got aggro a few times, but never got really hurt. For the memory thing, they just had two summoners send avatars after them, one did fenrir, the other did ifrit, and a few rangers took some shots at it (that's all they needed to kill it), but rangers mostly picked of strays. Classes with voke voked stray strays away and killed them. Doing this they never had anyone die (or get under 1/2 health as far as I know, I was helping heal them because I was bored =p, they got to the top, and did the bcnm then. And I did the bcnm for a quick death warp. =P The Delver did 98 dmg to me, I did 3 with fire... They went into the fight with stoneskin on everyone, they did titan -> guardian of earth. I know they had antidotes, and hi-potion, because they tested their macros (just did the item and interupted it). I'm guessing when they got in they just spammed 2 hours, the record for the fight was 2 mins 45 secs when they were all done. The only trouble they ran into was on the last floor, they got 3 aggro, but I don't think anyone got under 1/2 health.

I've almost finished all the starter promyvions and some of my LS has finished it. Getting to the BCNM is not hard. Your goal is to avoid all confrontation. Yes you can fight your way through but its not recommened. It takes enough time to find the Memory Receptacles and Strays. When you find one, kill all strays FIRST. This will become more important on lvls 2 and 3.

Once all strays are done then start killing the memory receptacle with ONLY ranged attacks. Tanks pull the strays that pop from the MR away to the rest of your meleers. Once the MR is killed, clean up the strays and move on. Rest up after port and repeat.

Once you get to the castle, zone in rest up and go

After doing all 3, I'd say the order of difficulty is Dem < Mea < Holla.

For all of them read the previous posts for ideas on what to do and their ability but spread the DDs out and kite the mob around the room. There is a small path bug where the mob doesn't go up the stairs. Exploit that to its fullest. For Mea and Holla the AoEs are nasty so be careful.

The best setups we've seen are one kiter (PLD usually the best because of hate and damage reasons) one DD and 4 ranged attackers (BLMs and RNGs).

DDs spread out at 12,3,6, and 9 positions and the kiter just starts kiting. Heal but primarulky go for damage. Around the 20% mark the mobs go crazy. Pull out 2 hours and get FAR away from the mob. Start blasting it with everythng you have.

Its expensive but I'm getting tired of dieing to the holla mob. I just blew 80k on medicines and food in this attempt to beat it.

CoP is causing quite an inflation on Titan. Most of the level 30 gear and medicines have tripled in price. I've also heard from some JP that the later BCNM battles become even more insane. One person even stated that the lvl 50 BCNM is harder than the Divine Might AA BCNM.